The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces, along with traditional input devices such as a mouse and keyboard, are widely used to detect inputs for manipulating content objects displayed on the computer or other electronic computing device.
Content objects include digital images, video, text, icons, applications, buttons, and other graphics. The display of the content objects and manipulation of the content objects is often cumbersome and inefficient. For example, a user must often navigate through a sequence of menus to open/close/configure a particular content object and repeat the process for subsequent content objects the user whishes to view or interact with which creates a significant cognitive burden on a user. In addition, these methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.